On 5/21/06, Arwel Parry arwel@cartref.demon.co.uk wrote:
Agreed, which is why we ought to have a licensing option which states something like "Technically copyrighted, but copyright holder not reasonably traceable or is indeterminable", and make it clear that this is intended only to be used in the case of private images which have not been published (in an effort to prevent it becoming a sinkhole for all the copyrighted photos everyone wants to crib from elsewhere).
I think that's a bad idea. People will start labeling everything that they can't find the author on as "technically copyrighted".
When a user labels something as their own creation and that they have licensed it under X-and-Y license, and we have no real reason to really suspect otherwise (and no, I don't think "but they didn't necessarily take the picture of themself" is enough to really suspect otherwise), then I think the risk is legally theirs. I'm also reasonably sure it falls under the safe-harbor provisions of the DMCA, as I understand them.
FF